This exploratory case study examined how elementary teachers engage in culturally responsive pedagogy when discussing their text selection practices in an inquiry based professional development course. Through semi-structured interviews and group meetings with four teachers in a suburban, public school district in Northern California, information…

The Instructional Leadership Corps (ILC) is an innovative professional learning project in which teacher leaders in California collaborate to lead sustainable professional development to support implementation of new student standards within their districts. Over more than 4 years, the ILC has served over 100,000 teachers. The responses of these…

This book contains a compilation of papers presented at the International Conference on Education and New Developments (END 2017), organized by the World Institute for Advanced Research and Science (W.I.A.R.S.). Education, in our contemporary world, is a right since we are born. Every experience has a formative effect on the constitution of the…

The teaching profession requires continuous learning, and in 2014, a new model of professional learning was introduced in California by the Instructional Leadership Corps (ILC), a group of expert teachers who organize local professional development to spark iterative changes in practice. In the four years following its launch, the ILC connected…

For more than 30 years, Peter Senge's theory of learning organizations has influenced the study of leadership and organizations. Researchers have studied various components of his framework: team cognition and mental models, team learning, shared vision, systems thinking, and personal mastery. But few articles have explored what it looks like in…

Several hundred teachers and thousands of students are benefiting from professional development projects that operate all over California under the auspices of the California Postsecondary Education Commission. The Improving Teacher Quality State Grants Program provides federal funds from the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 to universities that…

The purpose of this report is to describe what the authors learned from studying eight teacher career advancement initiatives implemented across a variety of contexts, including urban, suburban, and rural districts; high poverty and affluent districts; and in schools/districts both with and without strong union presence. They describe key…

CoTA (Collaborations: Teachers and Artists) is a professional development program that empowers teachers to access the arts in everyday instruction to support student achievement. CoTA schools commit to intense, 3-year collaborations for ten weeks each year where teachers learn to capitalize on arts content and strategies to promote knowledge and…

Education is overloaded with programs and data. The growth of digital power has aided and abetted the spread of accountability-driven data--Adequate Yearly Progress, test results for every child in every grade, Common Core standards, formative and summative assessments. Technology accelerates the onslaught of data. All this information goes for…

Outcomes assessment often becomes a focus of attention as a response to accreditation requirements. But if the emphasis is short-term, it can produce crisis-mode frustrations that will be repeated each time accreditation rolls around. Increasingly, accreditation agencies are asking for evidence that program-level assessment is ongoing. This…

This book brings together distinguished scholars, community college practitioners, and emerging leaders to expand upon existing theories, provide reflection on practice, and demonstrate the dynamic nature of community college internationalization. There is a special challenge for United States community colleges to move from selected international…

During the past several years, school superintendents and educational leaders from around the country have convened at the Pearson Education Instructional Leadership Council to discuss solutions for some of the most pressing issues they confront, especially regarding teaching and learning. Several common change principles have emerged from these…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the degree of importance that DuFour's nine characteristics of highly effective schools have on closing the academic achievement gap on the California High School Exit Exam, as perceived by high school principals. The study also examined the strategies believed to be most important in developing…

Faced with expectations to improve student learning and increasing student alternatives, school districts are challenged to make system-wide and sustainable improvement in student learning outcomes. The national accountability movement is associated with a growing body of research that has considered the role of the district to influence student…

The Yale-New Haven Teachers' Institute was founded in 1978 on the belief that "university and school teachers across the country have a strong, mutual interest in the improvement of teaching and learning in the schools." The core goal of the model is to establish a sustainable partnership between districts and universities in order to…